The Philadelphia Church

And He said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men. (Matt 4:19)"

Sabbatarian Anabaptists - The Annals
The Language of Redemption
Teachings of the Hewer of Wood
More on Matthew


Suggested Sabbath Readings
2007



4th Quarter 2007
  December 29, 2007 The unrighteous and ungodly still dominate this world. And it is Satan whom that well-intentioned but betrayed athlete salutes when he scores a touchdown on a Saturday afternoon. It is Satan who brings to Christians shopping bonanzas on the Sabbaths preceding Christmas. It is his ministers who hold midnight masses on the 25th of December; it is his ministers that preach an advent about which they know little and understand nothing.
  December 22, 2007 What about the loved one who is a drunkard, a drug addict, a habitual thief, an addicted gambler? Is this person automatically doomed to the flames of hell? No! This person will have paid the penalty for his or her sins with the person’s physical death. When he or she is resurrected in the great White Throne Judgment, the character of the person will come under judgment, not the acts of the flesh for which the death penalty has already been paid.
  December 15, 2007 If there is one sin—and only one sin—that will not be forgiven, then it would behoove a disciple to know what this sin is and to avoid it regardless of the cost to the disciple. It would behoove a disciple to revisit what Jesus said about a kingdom divided against itself is laid waste (Matt 12:25). He said that no city or house divided against itself will stand.
  December 8, 2007 Why is the foundation of the Church not God the Father but Christ? Does Paul make a mistake when he says that the foundation is Christ Jesus?
  December 1, 2007 The criteria Paul established protects both disciples and the ministries: those disciples who are served by a ministry know whether what is claimed is true or false. They know whether the ministry is genuine. And unlike in this world where moneys are pooled to form corporations that by their size can compete globally with other corporations, moneys do not have to be pooled in order for God to do His intended work here on earth. The small things of God are of sufficient power to wobble this world and topple unrighteousness.
  November 24, 2007 The kingdom of this world is not given to Christ many times, but once. When the stone cut without hands (Dan 2:45) breaks to pieces the metal kingdoms of the image Nebuchadnezzar saw, the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed and a kingdom that shall not be left to others.
  November 17, 2007 The most active disciples and organizations are, however, the most reluctant to vigorously preach repentance, for in doing so they will alienate someone whose money they need to continue the organization’s outreach programs for which the organization is known. They are the most reluctant to exclude from their fellowships disciples who practice sexual immorality; thus, within their assemblies their divorce rates are identical with that of the surrounding world, as is the number cohabiting rather than dwelling together as man and wife. They look, from God’s perspective, like the world, and from God’s perspective, they are the world. Some will ask if it is not presumptuous to pronounce what God’s perspective is on those who seek him through praise music and political activism rather than through obedience: No, it is not presumptuous; for God gives His views on sin in Ezekiel chapter 18.
  November 10, 2007 No one of endtime Esau, the hated son, shall be spared. God will not have pity on any, regardless of how well they sing praises to Him or create websites dripping of blood. If the disciple will not sigh and cry about the abominations committed within and without the Church, then the disciple is of the hated son.
  November 3, 2007 Simeon was awaiting the salvation of Israel, not a prize for finishing in second place. Yet Simeon’s prophecy about Jesus when he took the child in his arms placed Israel in the second position: “‘[M]y eyes have seen your salvation / that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, / a light for revelation to the Gentiles, / and for glory to your people Israel’” (vv. 30-32).
  October 27, 2007 In the wilderness, Israel grumbled about receiving manna and called it worthless food. Today, Christians call eating the Passover [i.e., taking the sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed] worthless food. Yes, they do. By taking the sacraments on any night but the 14th of Abib, they spurn Grace; they spurn the covenant poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
  October 20, 2007 Endtime sons of the prophets are those Israelites who have circumcised hearts as _the sons of the prophets_ in the 1st-Century CE were physically circumcised Israelites (Acts 3:25). And as Peter preached repentance to these 1st-Century sons of the prophets, servants of the endtime Elijah will, as John the Baptist did, preach repentance to the endtime Church, which is today more concerned about calendar issues than making disciples for Christ.
  October 13, 2007 The sign of Jonah will be a sign of turmoil and tribulation when the spiritual Body of Christ is resurrected from death on the third day. Jesus will not have brought peace to this world, but a sword. He will have set a man against his father (especially if this man makes a journey of faith into Sabbath observance) and a daughter against her mother (Matt 10:34-35). And this time of trouble is apparent in the sign of a red sky being analogous to the sign of Jonah.

3rd Quarter 2007
  Feast of Atonement Again, the Hebraic linguistic icon, Kipporim, that is usually translated into English as Atonement [at-one-ment] is better translated as "coverings." Traditionally, Judaism has used the singular form of the icon, Kippur; hence, calendars identify this High Sabbath as Yom Kippur. But this Day of Coverings appears in Scripture in its plural form. Two coverings-two goats covered the sins of Israel, not one. Both goats were the sin offering, not one. Both goats together represent the Lamb of God. One goat was sacrificed on the altar. Jesus was sacrificed at Calvary. And the other goat was lead into the wilderness by the hand of a fit man.
  September 15, 2007 It is only those Sabbatarian Christians who have the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10) that will form the offspring of the woman that keeps the commandments (Rev 12:17). Therefore, the remnant goes beyond keeping the commandments and loving God. The remnant also understands prophecy. And no one who thinks physically can understand prophecy. No one who looks for a physical temple to be built in physical Jerusalem understands endtime prophecies about Israel.
  Feast of Trumpets Since those who are reading this high Sabbath message most likely keep/kept the high Sabbath day, it shall here be said that you brought yourself before God on the holy day. You may have also brought moneys, but those moneys are not your offering to God. You are. You presented yourself to God and whether knowingly or not, you committed yourself to being a servant of God for the remainder of your life. You have broken away from those disciples who, if glorified, will be gatekeepers and excluded from the presence of God. You presented yourself inside the temple for service. The heavenly realm is timeless: your service doesn't stop tomorrow or the next day. Once it begins, it continues forward through Christ's millennial reign and into the age beyond when all that is physical ceases to be.
  September 8, 2007 Paul consistently addresses the Father and the Son in his epistles, while never sending greetings to the saints from a third personage—and Paul separates the Spirit of Christ from the Spirit of the Father, which is the Spirit by which the Father raises the dead (again, John 5:21). So for Paul, the Holy Spirit [Pneuma ’Agion] does not have personhood but is a force in the heavenly realm that equates to physical breath or wind in this physical realm. In the beginning God was two who functioned as one as if the two were married. The creation concealed the existence of the second entity from physically circumcised Israel even though the plural pronoun is properly used in Genesis 1:26
  September 1, 2007 The modern State of Israel is not the endtime nation of Israel, a nation whose rite of inclusion is circumcision of the heart instead of the foreskin … it is this endtime nation of Israel whose accuser is Moses that has now been taken in the act of adultery. Jesus does not condemn this nation, but commands that this nation go and sin no more (John 8:11). Sin is the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4). Any lawlessness is sin. So this woman who would be the Bride of Christ must sin no more. She must cease her transgressions of the law, for no one, no nation can enter into God's rest on the following day regardless of repentance (cf. Num 14:11, 39-42; Ps 95:10-11; Heb 3:16-4:11).
  August 25, 2007 Endtime prophecies are not about human kings or presidents; they are not about physical nations. Rather, they are about ideologies, about the mental state of human beings, about who rules these mental states or landscapes. They are about the Church and about what happens when those who are born of Spirit are empowered by the Holy Spirit as the Body becomes the Bride. They are about eliminating those who teach falsely or presumptuously. They are about the fall of spiritual Babylon and the rise of the Son of Man, Head and Body. And they are about the sacrifice of the Body during the first half of the Tribulation.
  August 18, 2007 After Jesus healed the man by the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath, Jews sought to kill Jesus for not only breaking their Sabbath regulations but also for making Himself equal with God (John 5:18). And in the exchange that followed, Jesus told these Jews, "'Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. If you had believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words'" (vv. 45-47). Therefore, the following juxtaposition holds: the written words of Moses are visible representations of the invisibly uttered words of Jesus.
  August 11, 2007 Prior to the second Passover followed three and a half years later by the kingdom of this world becoming the kingdom of the Father and the Son, without repentance a son of disobedience will remain a son of disobedience, imprisoned in sin, a bondservant of Satan, a person who is numbered among the dead. So it is for the benefit of this person that he or she is baptized for the dead, the person being then dead; for following repentance and being baptized for the dead, the person will receive the Holy Spirit and will, if still alive when the second Passover occurs, be baptized by Spirit.
  August 4, 2007 The intertextual relationship between the Jonah account and account of Christ’s resurrection now forms the basis for a hypertextual relationship to the Spiritual Body of Christ being resurrected from death after the third day, with this “third day” being day three of the Genesis one creation account. Thus, the conjoined intertextual realities of what has already happened forms the prophetic revelation of what will happen during the seven endtime years of tribulation, with this second text not now being an inscribed text but a text generated in the disciple’s mind. When plants bring forth seed and fruit on day three, God declares the day good. It is only on day two, when no longer does anyone born of Spirit remain here on earth that God fails to declare the events of the day good. And through typology, a disciple can understand why God is not pleased with what occurs on day two.
  July 28, 2007 To follow Jesus is to imitate Paul which will have the person living as a spiritual Judean and spurning the idolatry and lawlessness of the Roman Church and her errant daughters, all truly synagogues of Satan that claim to have the spirit of God but lie; for these communities remain in bondage to disobedience as evidenced by when they take the Passover sacraments. Peter condemns lawless communities when he writes, "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction" (2 Pet 2:1). These destructive heresies are firmly imbedded in denying that Jesus was three days and three nights [72 hours] in the grave; in denying that Jesus fulfilled the only sign He gave, that of Jonah. It is upon this sign, this rock that He built the church.
  July 21, 2007 The change that occurs within the vision marks when John lives to see Christ's return by consciously entering the heavenly realm. This opportunity was not given to Peter, but it was apparently also given to Paul even though Paul was prevented from telling what he saw. Thus, John's vision has credibility even though it hasn't been understandable.
  July 14, 2007 The disciples of Jesus were (and functioned as) a synagogue within greater Judaism. And now it is more easily understood why the Apostle Paul identifies disciples as the temple of God; for the new creatures that are sons of God [these sons forming a holy nation and a royal priesthood] dwell within tents of flesh as the Levites whose turn it was to serve dwelt within the temple. Hence, disciples are to serve continuously.
  July 7, 2007 (1) all who came before Jesus were hirelings, or servants. (2) The good shepherd sacrifices himself for the sheep. (3) The good shepherd has more than one fold of sheep, but these folds will be brought together to be one flock with one shepherd. (4) The good shepherd knows his sheep and they hear his voice; the sheep do not follow other voices.

2nd Quarter 2007
  June 30, 2007 The task of the shepherds of Israel is to bring back into the light the one who has wandered away; the task of the watchmen is to warn the sheep and the shepherds when wolves or thieves are about to prey upon the sheep. But there was not a watchman to warn Israel that the Adversary slithered into the sheep pen and slew more than are left alive—the carnage is self-evident. Nevertheless, the slain of the Serpent will be few compared to the slain of the Lord if Israel does not heed the warning that a second Passover slaughter of firstborns will occur.
  June 23, 2007 The first defining characteristic of the synagogue of Satan” is that they say they are Jews, but are not. They lie when they say they are Jews. And the second defining characteristic is that they are of Satan, meaning they remain sons of disobedience, following the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2).
  June 16, 2007 The two witnesses will not be initially recognized by Jew or Greek, Christian or Muslim; for they will not be in physical Jerusalem, but in a spiritual wilderness as John the Baptist was in a physical wilderness.
  June 9, 2007 The key of David is understanding typology—and no one or no organization has employed this key to the extent that The Philadelphia Church has. The Bible is an encoded book, but the code of importance is not a substitution of letters and of finding names and event dates closely clustered in the Hebraic text. The code of importance is the code unlocked by the key of David, with this key disclosing that there will again be a Passover slaughter of firstborns that can be likened to the slaughter of firstborns in Egypt when Yah set His hand to liberate a physical nation from physical bondage to a physical king. This second Passover liberation will be of a spiritually circumcised nation from bondage to sin and death.
  June 2, 2007 The end of this age began immediately post Calvary. All of spiritually circumcised Israel has been living through one long spiritual night ever since, with the midnight hour of that night not yet occurring. The time of the end began when the plan of God could be understood, with this period not beginning any earlier than January 2002. The seven endtime years will begin when the death angel again passes over Israel, slaying all firstborns not covered by the blood of the Passover Lamb of God.
  May 26, 2007 There is no favoritism with God: both the natural Israelite and the Gentile must, by faith, have his or her heart circumcised by Spirit. To teach otherwise is to make oneself into a false teacher and a false prophet. Circumcision by hands is meaningless in this era. The color of one’s skin is meaningless. One’s biological lineage is meaningless. One’s social status is meaningless—all these things pertain to the flesh, and not to the new creature born of Spirit that dwells in a tent of flesh as a physically circumcised Israelite dwelt in Egypt in houses of clay bricks, or in tents of animal skins and fabric.
  May 19, 2007 Paul addressed these things in passing as he laid the foundation for the spiritual temple, and one of the _givens_ that forms this foundation is that Jesus created all things, and that all things were created for Him.
  May 12, 2007 If there was one simple answer that could be given in every instance, life would be simple … there is actually a simple answer: the disciple who would be great in the kingdom of heaven keeps the commandments and teaches others to do likewise (Matt 5:19).
  May 5, 2007 The linguistic phrase “a cult” carries a negative stereotype of such enormous size that the stereotype alone will smother organizations that are not led by dynamic personalities, thereby assuring the continuance of the stereotype. Men such as Martin Luther, Menno Simon, and Herbert Armstrong would strongly deny that they are cultmeisters, but the “radical” nature of their teachings produced bodies of believers that continued beyond their deaths to self-identify themselves by the name of the individual, or in the case of Armstrong, by the identifying phrase, Church of God.
  April 28, 2007 The relationship that existed in the beginning between Theos and Theon was like that of a man and his wife, in that then two were one as far as natural Israel knew. The relationship was not a hypostatic relationship where one was atop the other so that the lower revealed the upper one. Rather, it was a side by side relationship in which two functioned as one, a relationship like that between Moses and Aaron, who was the spokesman for Moses.
  April 21, 2007 As men cannot command other men to accept salvation, men cannot command women to become meek and quiet. A man can command women to cover their hair if these women want to fellowship with a certain assembly of disciples, but the person who covered against her will is only outwardly compliant. Only her flesh complies with the command to meekness. And the flesh will not be saved.
  April 14, 2007 The many who would have disciples worship God from a physical location or through a physical organization are those who would deceive disciples if they could (v. 26). But the anointing that is on all who have been born of Spirit actually causes all to have no need for a teacher (cf. v. 27 with Heb 8:11) … those disciples who know God have no need for a teacher, but all who say they know God but do not keep His commandments are liars (v. 4). It is through keeping the words of God, living by every word that has come from the mouth of God (again, Matt 4:4), that a disciple's love for God is perfected. Therefore, the person, circumcised or uncircumcised, who will not by faith keep the precepts of the law (Rom 2:26-29) is a spiritual Greek, a Gentile, an alien in the house of God, a person whose citizenship remains in this world.
  2nd High Day Unleavened Bread Both the circumcised nation that left Egypt, and that nation’s mixed circumcised and uncircumcised children who received the second covenant—a covenant made in addition to the Sinai or Horeb covenant (Deut 29:1)—were told to appear before the Lord three times a year. These three seasons were Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. But there are not three harvests of God: there are only two, with one represented by the barley harvest and with the other represented by the wheat harvest.
  Wave Sheaf Offering Celebration In the course of the calendar advancement, greater Christendom will celebrate the resurrection of Christ Jesus on the day when His resurrection should be observed as the Wave Sheaf Offering, an appointed feast of the Lord that is to be kept by all generations of Israel as is the weekly Sabbath to be kept. And as with the Sabbath commandment, which moved from being a law written on stone tablets that governed the actions of the hand and the body to being a law written on the fleshy tablets of the heart and the mind to govern the thoughts of the mind and the desires of the heart, the Wave Sheaf Offering moved from being the waving of the first ripe sheaf of Judean barley to being the celebration of Christ Jesus' acceptance by the Father.
  April 7, 2007 The way of God must be made straight, and the way to God is not through earthly thoughts or deeds. The way to God is not through the sword or the bomb or prophecies about what happens to physical peoples and nations. The way to God is not through the stomach or material wealth or the good works of global television ministries. It is solely through repentance, and by faith turning from the ways of this world to live by the laws of God … every human being who has drawn the breath of life will be judged by Christ Jesus, but not before God inflicts His wrath on this world so there is a clear delineation of what constitutes godly behavior, the criteria through which judgment will occur.
  1st High Day Unleavened Bread Plagues have already spiritually occurred to Israel, and the Passover Lamb of God has been slaughtered. But these plagues will be repeated in type during the Tribulation as God makes a separation between rebelling disciples and the third part of humanity that will be born of Spirit when the kingdom of the world becomes the kingdom of the Most High and of His Christ (Rev 11:15). This third part (Zech 13:9) will form the great endtime harvest, for today’s Christian Church, with few exceptions, will rebel against God as Israel rebelled in the wilderness of Paran. Today’s greater Church refuses to eat the Passover sacraments on the night Jesus was betrayed. The sacraments of bread and wine are the fruit of the earth on every other night but the 14th of the first month; they are Cain’s offering to the Lord.
  How to Observe the Passover

1st Quarter 2007
  March 31, 2007 Anyone who is sexually active outside of marriage is to be excluded from Christian fellowship, a tough and uncompromising position that comes from realizing that those who have been born of Spirit have no fellowship with those who have not been so born; that the person who has not been born of Spirit still has his or her mind set on the things of the flesh, and is at least passively hostile toward God.
  March 24, 2007 Baptism is not unto life, but symbolically represents the immersion of the world in water—the Flood of Noah’s day—and the loss of natural life that comes with drowning, the loss of breath [pneuma] that comes from the lungs filling with water. For Believers, baptism becomes the “death” that precedes judgment; for judgment is now upon the household of God (1 Pet 4:17).
  March 17, 2007 The one[s] who from a spiritual wilderness makes straight the endtime way of the Lord will preach repentance, and will baptize born-of-Spirit Israelites into repentance.
  March 10, 2007 Where in Scripture are spiritual people addressed? Where is the beef, as the Cattlemen's television commercials of a few decades ago asked? Where is the meat, the real substance of what it means to be spiritual and spiritually minded?
  March 03, 2007 To be "baptized into Christ" (Gal 3:27) is to be crucified with Christ (Rom 6:6). Therefore, when the practice of full immersion baptism ceased, disciples ceased being crucified with Christ-and when disciples ceased being crucified with Christ, the Body of Christ ceased to exist.
  February 24, 2007 Before the second Passover will occur-when the Church is liberated from bondage to disobedience; when the dead Body of Christ is resurrected to life--the Church must experience enough to soften its hearts so that those who have already been born of Spirit can receive spiritually circumcised hearts, the circumcision they should have received long ago if they had made a mental journey of faith equivalent in distance to the physical journey the patriarch Abraham made by faith.
  February 17, 2007 A person cannot walk as Jesus walked and live as a Gentile, cannot happen! Christianity as practiced by Jesus and taught by His first disciples is a fundamentalist sect of Judaism that has removed the Pharisees' emphasis on the physical and relocated this emphasis on the spiritual, with the laws and practices of Moses moving from the hand to the heart, from the body to the mind, from the outside of the cup to the inside.
  February 10, 2007 The gates of Hades would not prevail against the Church, a statement that does not preclude the Church from dying but does preclude the Church from staying dead. So even though Satan took over the dead Body after it was buried in hell and called it the living Church of God, causing it to focus on the things of men rather than on the things of God, the Body of Christ was actually concealed in the heart of the earth.
  February 3, 2007 Answers to Often Asked Questions - The Second Covenant, What is meant by Grace? Speaking the Father’s Words, The Father’s Confirmation of the Sabbaths of God, What is Sin?
  January 20, 2007 An assertion will here be made that the return of a remnant of Israel from Babylon to Jerusalem in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah foreshadows and is a copy and type of a remnant of the Church leaving spiritual Babylon to rebuild the house of God in heavenly Jerusalem. This remnant of spiritual Israel was led by the Radical Reformers of the 16th-Century. This remnant has been historically identified as Anabaptists, but it was their non-participation in the governance of this world that signified their exit from spiritual Babylon, the single kingdom of this world over which Satan reigns as the prince of the power of the air.
  January 13, 2007 The old written code does not pertain to those Israelites who are spiritually circumcised. The old written code is for those consigned to disobedience. But this does not mean that anyone who is of Israel can transgress the commandments of God. It means that these commandments have been internalized and remain in the same relative position to the new creature born of Spirit as the old written code is to the physically circumcised Israelite who awaits spiritual birth.recreation, and all of those things that sons of disobedience regard as important.
  January 6, 2007 If the dead are to bury the dead, then disciples who have been made alive through receipt of the Breath of the Father are in the odd position of placing God ahead of family, ahead of community, ahead of state and nation, ahead of social causes, ahead of military defense, ahead of financial considerations, ahead of work, business, recreation, and all of those things that sons of disobedience regard as important. And if the dead are to bury the dead, then the cares of the flesh and the concerns of family and community belong to those who are dead. Disciples are to proclaim the kingdom of God. They have been purchased for a price for one job: proclaiming the kingdom of God.


Past Sabbath Readings